Katsu Naito Captures Gay New York in the '90s with Westside Rendezvous

Think New York City in the '90s and most think glamazons and bright lights, but for photographer Katsu Naito, he saw the dark beauty of transsexual prostitutes in the Meatpacking district, which he captured in his Westside Rendezvous prostitute shoot.

It was only this year that the Japanese-born Naito decided to publish these edgy, intimate photos in a book of a time passed and unnoticed because, "15 years ago, images like these wouldn’t have been so easily accepted," Naito told Vice Magazine in an interview, "20 years later, all of the sex workers have moved on and there’s not so much of a stigma attached to this kind of thing anymore."

The beauty is embedded in the simple and raw elegance that these women faced given their reality of being poor and gay in New York at the time. I am absolutely compelled by the Westside Rendezvous prostitute shoot. In their faces there is a story that just begs you to sit down and see more of this amazing series.